XIII
About the time our poultry colony was fairly established in the “settin’” business, a smiling little sheep-herder of the hills handed me a note from Mary. It was certainly unique,—a sheet of pale gray note-paper daintily folded, and pinned together by a white feather crossing it diagonally. Fastened near the top of the inside page was a picture of a row of cunning little chickens just emerging from the shell, cut perhaps from some advertisement; and just beneath the following poetic outburst:—
“To the Hermitage hasten to tea,
And delay not to fix;
You’re wanted just for to see
Our brand-new chicks.”
“How humiliating, with ours still in the shell!” said Tom. “We started neck and neck in this race, and they beat us with eggs, and now come under the wire two weeks ahead with young chickens. No wonder they have ‘dropped into poetry,’—though that second line does seem a bit superfluous, don’t you think?”
“Yes; they must have needed a rhyme for ‘chicks,’ as they well know that to ‘fix’ is with us a lost art.”
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